Capua Archaeological Museum

Capua Archaeological Museum in Santa Maria Capua Vetere displays a series of artefacts from around the region including from the Bronze Age, Iron Age, the Etruscan civilisation, Ancient Greek and Roman objects.

Adjacent to the Capua Archaeological Museum is a second century Mithraeum, a subterranean temple of the Persian cult of Mithras. You can visit the Mithraeum with a member of the museum staff.

Capua Archaeological Museum history

The town of Santa Maria Capua Vetere is a medieval descendant of Ancient Capua which was one of the largest and most important cities of the ancient world. It was famous for its many monuments of Roman times, including the Amphitheater Campano, second only in size to the Colosseum of Rome.

The Archaeological Museum of ancient Capua is housed in a historic building from the mid 19th century, originally the site of a Cavalry Barracks. The building was built by incorporating the tower of Sant’Erasmo, where Robert of Anjou was born in 1278 and where Pope Boniface VII was hosted. The Tower had in turn settled on the remains of the Capitolium which occupied the central area of ​​the south side of the Albana forum.

The museum complex, owned by Mibact since 1981, houses the museum, inaugurated in 1995, the restoration laboratories, the museum playroom, exhibition rooms, conference rooms, warehouses and management offices.

Research and discoveries have taken place and made it possible to recover a rich heritage that has generated the need to establish in 1995 a “Museum of the territory” which completes and is in continuity with the Provincial Museum of Campania of Capua, founded in 1870 and inaugurated in 1874, which houses most of the finds from the Sanctuary of Fondo Patturelli, in particular the extraordinary collection of the famous tuff statues, the Matres of Capua.

Capua Archaeological Museum today

The numbered rooms house extraordinary finds that can tell the importance and the hegemonic role that the ancient centre has assumed since its origins.

Tickets to the archaeological museum include admission to the Mithraeum. The Mitreo di Capua, dated to the end of the 1st century. AD is considered the oldest in the West and one of the most important Mithraic places. Discovered in 1922 and open to the public since 1937, the mithraeum is accessible from a turret building

Getting to Capua Archaeological Museum

The archaeological museum is in the heart of Santa Maria Capua Vetere which is less than an hour away from Pompei by car.